Costs of other services and products, included in Metrex Monitoring remain unchanged.

About Metrex Engineering
Metrex Engineering is well known as one of most effective and reliable companies in Russia in field of IT-infrastructure development, installation, and servicing.
Metrex Engineering has Microsoft Silver Certified Partner status in Midmarket Solution Provider competency as well as Independent Software Vendor (ISV) specialization.

About Metrex Monitoring
Metrex Monitoring is comprehensive MS SCOM 2007 R2-based solution, including specially developed software, and range of services, customizable reporting system and trainings for end users. It feature extremely fast deployment and has very high percentage of successful implementations. Effectiveness of Metrex Monitoring is confirmed by numerous successful implementations in different companies.

MP general changes are:

• The UPS Structure was changed and had become more logical. For the UPS with several input (or output) power lines feature of viewing the information for each line was added.
• Rules and monitors were changed in a way to avoid so-called “cookdown” – situations when the same value was requested for several times which slowed down the performance.
• The set of new rules and monitors was added.
• Optimization was enabled for all the performance rules. It allows decreasing database load and increasing the speed of performance rules displaying. It is possible to disable the optimization option or change its settings.
• The data for some performance rules was also stored in Warehouse DB which allowed creating the appropriate data report.
• Now monitors allow to generate notifications not only for instant condition changes, but also for average values which can be useful to reduce the number of false operations (so-called “jitter”).

UPS monitoring changes are:

• The number of supported results of periodic calibration and scheduled diagnostics tests alerts was increased.

Input and output lines monitoring changes are:

• Automatic adjustment of thresholds for monitors of current frequency and voltage according to local standards was added. Thus, if in the company has geographically spread offices, it isn’t necessary to change the default thresholds for the UPSs which are in the different countries.
• Input and output power lines monitoring for specific line.

“Environmental Monitor” monitoring changes are:

• Automatic adjustment of temperature thresholds depending on the chosen mode measurement (in C or F) was added.

Our management packs are successfully tested for compatibility with this CU so we can confirm that Metrex products also work with the latest version of SCOM 2007 R2.

We inform those, who missed this quite interesting event that at this seminar Meterx Engineering announced its readiness to help Microsoft partners to raise sales of MS SCOM and the accompanying software, by using our SCOM-based solution Metrex Monitoring as “spearhead”. We are ready to give partners all the profits and bonuses from sales of Microsoft products’ licensees, having left ourselves licensing of our Management Packs, deployment services and support. Besides the fact that this kind of cooperation corresponds well to Microsoft’s partnership’s new policy, aimed to make partners more narrowly focused on their competences and foster more active cooperation in selling complex solutions, our offer opens a way to participate in large-scale projects for those companies, who outgrown a SMB segment.

We also ready to support partners with our experience and competence in developing and deploying solutions based on Microsoft’s products in redundant configurations and on large IT systems. Our experience has shown, using of Metrex Monitoring significantly alters companies’ understanding of its own IT-infrastructure. In particular, improving and planning of corporate IT becomes more consistent. Flexibility and scalability of our solutions allows us to deploy them not only in large but also in medium-sized companies, and thereafter gradually expand the focus of system and grow with the client.

We will help grow your business and your customers’ businesses, creating an effective tool for planning and managing corporate IT-infrastructure, and, if necessary, taking on the care of its maintenance and timely development.

The management pack enables the monitoring of UPS’s components like battery, environmental monitoring card etc. and allows controlling UPS’s parameters such as input voltage, current frequency, output load, battery temperature etc.

The management pack includes availability and configuration monitoring, performance data collection, and default thresholds.

The gathered information is presented to the monitoring operators using all the visualizing abilities of the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 – e-mail notifications, diagrams, health explorer, performance graphs views etc.

[Show as slideshow]

In comparison with other products, the Metrex Engineering Management Pack operates solely using the functions of the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. This makes the installation and the configuration very similar to that of the standard Microsoft management packs. The management pack doesn’t require any dedicated databases, servers or processes to operate.

In most of the cases the end user will not be required to carry out any post-installation fine tuning – the threshold values are pre-configured based on long-term statistics, gathered from live power circuits.

Supported UPSs

Metrex APC Monitoring Management Pack utilizes only standard APC monitoring techniques using the SNMP and SNMP-traps. This enables the ability to monitor virtually any models UPSs by APC. Additionally, Ethernet connector in UPS is recommended but not required.

System Requirements

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

• Switches
• Routers
• Firewalls
• Wireless Access Points

The management pack enables the monitoring of both hardware  components such as RAM, CPUs, Power Supplies as well as logical components such as processes and IPSLA monitors.

With the ability to monitor IPSLA, now the SCOM can monitor the quality of the links to the remote offices.

The management pack includes availability and configuration monitoring, performance data collection, and default thresholds.

The gathered information is presented to the monitoring operators using all the visualizing abilities of the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 – performance graphs views, health explorer, diagrams, e-mail notifications etc.

[Show as slideshow]

In order to simplify the troubleshooting, all the rules and monitors included into this management pack are linked to corresponding highly detailed articles in  the Knowledge Base.

In comparison with other products, the Metrex Engineering Management Pack operates solely using the functions of the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. This makes the installation and the configuration very similar to that of the standard Microsoft management packs. The management pack doesn’t require any dedicated databases, servers or processes to operate.

In most of the cases the end user will not be required to carry out any post-installation fine tuning – the threshold values are pre-configured based on long-term statistics, gathered from live networks.

Supported Equipment

Metrex Cisco Management Pack utilizes only standard Cisco monitoring techniques using the SNMP and Syslog. This enables the ability to monitor virtually any models of switches, routers, firewalls or wireless access points by Cisco. In very rare cases in order to get a complete readout the device need to be upgraded to the latest IOS version

System Requirements

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

Warranty

Metrex Cisco Management Pack

• Successfully passed the beta-testing phase in several live networks
• Was submitted to the developers of the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 as was confirmed to be compliant
• Is implemented in several large networks

Annual Management Packs’ supporting contract costs 15% of total Management Packs’ purchase sum. This contract includes e-mail technical support and major updates for our Management Packs.

The minimum amount of purchases is $5,000.

Also our discounts for large purchase amount are still valid:

• 20% when purchase amount is greater than $100,000

Management Pack’s licensing model is “Per device”.

Let’s see the following example: your company plans to monitor about 30 switches, 4 firewalls, 10 routers and 20 UPSs with support for our Management Packs. So the monitoring solution will cost:

30*70+4*175+10*210+20*105 = $7,000

Supporting contract will cost: $7,000 * 15% = $1,050

Total sum is $8,050

In addition to the standard requirements for “SNMP Service”, “SNMP WMI provider” and  Powershell v1.0 the installer requires the hotfix 942589. This patch is responsible for fixing the issues with the File System Redirector in Windows x64

Let’s start with the description of what the File System Redirector is in the first place. This service is required for any 32-bit applications to operate normally in a 64-bin environment.

The reason for the redirector is interoperability. Most of the applications are using the Windows’s system components and libraries but in reality most of the 32 bit applications can intercommunicate correctly only with other 32 bit application. This is one of the reasons why Microsoft does include 32-bit version of the most important system components (IIS, Powershell, SNMP, etc…) into Windows x64

The redirector operates very straightforwardly. When a 32-bit application attempts to access a file in C:\Windows\System32, the OS routes the request to a sandbox witch lives at c:\windows\SysWOW64

This folder contains the 32-bit version of the system components that we’ve mentioned before. And the set of the components is amazing – IIS, Powershell and SNMP were mentioned before, msixec, mmc.exe, net.exe, cmd.exe… Even mspaint!

But what happens when a 32 bit application needs to interact with a 64bit application? While the list of the 32 bit components available is impressing, some components do exist only in 64-bit versions. Examples could be powershell comandlets, required to interact with SCOM 2007. For those cases there’s a special path c:\Windows\Sysnative. This allows to bypass the redirector and access files, located in System32 instead of SysWOW64.

Unfortunately this mechanism doesn’t work in Windows 2003 x64 unless you apply the hotfix 942589.

Why is it so important? Our licensing mechanisms were originaly designed for the x86 architecture. While they operate normally under x64, they extensively use the sysnative path to run the 64 bit powershell. So for those who did not upgrade to Windows 2008 but does prefer 64bit system we have bad news and good news:

The bad news is : you will have to install the hotfix and reboot the server after the installation.

The good news is : Our licensing module runs only on the SCOM serveк with the RMS role. You will have to apply the hotfix only to this particular server. SCOM servers with roles of MS, Gateway, Agent are used as SNMP proxies and do not require this hotfix.

In general, real-time services (RDP, VoIP, videoconferencing, etc) are not only affected by link or network failures – packet loss and jitter are the main contributors to the service degradation.

As the result the tasks of VPN monitoring can be defined as follows: notification of the support operator (using alerts) and fast preliminary diagnostics of the problem. After that the problem is forwarded to the network support group (with the symptoms and preliminary diagnostics) for further actions – double check the symptoms and run deeper diagnostics, then either contact the Network Provider or solve the problem locally. With backup channels at hand and proper reaction times this will minimize the probability of full disconnect of the remote office. This procedure also allows for QoS monitoring, providing the personnel on the remote locations with a comfortable level of service.

Let’s consider a real-life example. A company with 20 regional offices that are connected to the central location with 3 links each – about 60 channels altogether. We’ve started to monitor and log network failures with the duration of more than 30 minutes on the 17^th of March. During the 15 days of March we’ve logged 40 network faults. In 6 cases the Network Operators were contacted and in 3 cases the users noticed the performance degradation. In April we’ve logged 51 faults, in 22 cases the NOs were contacted and only in 2 cases the users did notice the faults. During 20 days of May 16 faults were logged, in 8 cases the NOs were contacted and no user-affecting cases. The next diagram shows the average faults per day for each month:

As you can see the overall amount of faults decreased since we’ve started the monitoring and the logging process. The difference between the overall faults and the faults that required the NOs to be contacted cannot be explained by the fact of the 24/7 monitoring process itself, but it looks like the NOs don’t want to lose their customers when they realize that the QoS is being monitored J On the other hand it’s just a theory.

How does I work? The Operator get the alerts as SMSes, E-mail and also observes it in the SCOM’s console:

The time between the failure and the generated alert is configurable, but in our case is no longer than 4 minutes. Such a long time between the event and the alerts is used in order to avoid the alarm “noise” as the amount of short-term network outages is quite high.

As the alert contains the name of the monitored channel,  the operator have to choose the site (in the SCOM console):
/p>

Then a window with the graphs of the most critical parameters is opened:

The selected parameters and the order of the grouping is the result of a long-term testing process. This particular grouping allows for the quickest possible “1-click” diagnosis of the problem.

Let’s consider the screenshot in more details:

• Graphs 1 and  2 shows the state of the router (CPU load, memory consumption etc…) and a quick glance will show whether the problem is affected by the router or something else.
• The graph 3  shows the RTT of the integral (i.e. the main and both backup channels together)  channel between the remote location and the central office, as “seen” by the end user.
• Graph 4’s positive values on the Y-axis shows the amount of lost packets over all of the channels for that region, the negative Y values show the current state. In this particular case it is “6”, which means “channel failure”. Different types за channels are color-coded differently – integral is red, MPLS is blue and the two backup channels are green and yellow.
• Graph 5 shows the throughput through the VPNs. You can see the traffic migrating from the main MPLS link to the backup public VPN
• And at last graph 6 shows the RTT of each of the channels to the site, except the integral one.

Based on the priority (failures of the main MPLS link and one of the backup VPNs obviously do have different priorities), the operator waits a predefined amount of time in case the problem will self-repair and then forwards the problem to the network department. Failures that were observed for more than 30 minutes are logged and are included into the monthly report together with the SCOM statistics:

And the RND’s case wasn’t a  long one – the case was forwarded to the network department, but the engineer didn’t have the time to log into the router – the problem disappeared and the case was closed. Fortunately this happens in most cases:

As far as the packet loss is concerned, the mechanism is principally the same  and of course everything can be tuned, tweaked, redefined  and customized.

P.S. And for the Grand Finale – most interesting screenshots from real-life situations. This illustrated how our ISPs sometimes do “provide”. No comments:

And here the somebody started to download a movie…